Nursing Errors

Guest: Danielle Ofri, attending physician at Bellevue Hospital, clinical professor of medicine at NYU School of Medicine, Editor-in-Chief of the "Bellevue Literary Review," and author of "When We Do Harm: A Doctor Confronts Medical Error"

Medical errors are all statistics until they happen to someone you know. How and when do doctors and nurses screw up? And what is being done to lower the odds? Dr. Danielle Ofri's new book tackles the statistics and the stories behind them, including her own near fatal mistake misreading a chart when she was a young doctor.

How a Hungarian Physician Saved Women from Childbed Fever and Became the ‘Savior of Mothers’

Guest: Anthony Valerio, editor and teacher, author of “Semmelweis”

Long before anyone knew what a germ was, in the 1840s, a young Hungarian doctor in Vienna fought to get doctors and nurses to wash their hands. He was ignored, and ultimately driven from the profession. And unnecessary deaths continued for decades to come. We now have a term for what happened. "Semmelweis Syndrome" happens when experts ignore evidence because it contradicts their traditions and biases.